AHRI HDSS:Individual Health Surveillance HIV 2003-04

The Africa Centre Demographic Information System (ACDIS) was established in 2000 by the Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI; formerly the Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies) covering a population of approximately 85,0000 residents and non-residents from an area 438km2 in size in uMkhanyakude district, KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa.

In 2003, population-based individual health surveillance (funded by the Wellcome Trust, UK) was started in ACDIS through annual surveys. The field visits took place from November 2002 to February 2005, the vast majority (>97%) during 2003-04. The annual individual health surveillance involved drawing, at the start of each data collection surveillance round, an “Eligibility List” of all adult eligible individuals, and then, during the data collection round, attempting to visit and contact those individuals. At the time of visit some people included in the Eligibility List were found to in fact be ineligible - perhaps because they were dead or had out-migrated - events either not known about at the time the Eligibility List was compiled or occurring between the drawing up of the Eligibility List and the actual visit. These 'retrospective ineligibilities' are identifiable in the dataset as 'Premature Completions with reasons such as “Death or “Outmigration”. There were also some individuals who could not be contacted, even after repeated visits and 'tracking' attempts for those who were reported to have moved. These are identifiable as PrematureCompletionReason =?? (i.e.Non-Contact). Additionally, a small number were contacted but refused to participate in the survey. They are identifiable by VisitType = Refused. Finally, there are some who participated in the survey, but refused the HIV test offered. They are identifiable as HIVRefused = 'Y'.

This dataset includes only those included in the Eligibility List. It does not include the small number (x) of 'Voluntary walk-in Testers' i.e., individuals who were not part of the Eligibility List, but who visited Counselling Centres and requested an HIV test.

Eligibility criteria for inclusion into the Eligibility List was different for residents and non-residents. For residents: resident males aged 15 and 54 and resident females aged 15 and 49 were included. For non-residents: a 10% stratified sample of non-residents was also included in the Eligibility List. A specific reference date was used to draw the Eligibility List.

Collection of the heights/weights/blood pressures was abandoned after part of the Round (in March 2004) as it was very slow, especially the blood pressures.

For 2003-04 General Health dataset, the records defined, for this dataset as being those Woman/ManStatusObservations with visit dates between 1 Jan 2003 and 31 Dec 2004 and DSS Round not 101 or 102. This spans DSS Rounds 8, 9 and 10 and 10. 97% of the visits actually took place between February 2003 and April 2004. Before then the forms used are known as 'WHL' or 'MGL' for which a separate dataset exists. Also, after WGHv1/MGHv1 there were substantially shorter forms used, called WGHv2/ MGHv2. That is also a separately available dataset.
Individuals were free to refuse to participate in and to withdraw from the individual surveys, without any impact on routine health care or other services to which they were entitled. If a household refused to participate in the household component, its members were not invited to participate in the individual component during that same household visit.

Note: Users of these datasets are strongly encouraged to refer to the questionnaires included in the documentation for the dataset to check carefully for any changes in question wording, ordering, options offered etc. This document does not attempt to describe every single change and variation.

For more refer:

1. Tanser F, Hosegood V, Bärnighausen T, Herbst K, Nyirenda M, Muhwava W, Newell C, Viljoen J, Mutevedzi T, Newell ML. Cohort Profile: Africa Centre Demographic Information System (ACDIS) and population-based HIV survey. Int J Epidemiol. 2008 Oct;37(5):956-62. doi: 10.1093/ije/dym211. Epub 2007 Nov 12. PMID: 17998242; PMCID: PMC2557060.